In present-day America, an overwhelming
majority of organizations professing a commitment to the defense of
civil rights maintain that the United States is a nation irredeemably
infected with racism -- a place where discrimination and oppression
remain the order of the day, and where little if any progress has
been made toward improving the social and economic condition of
blacks and other nonwhite minorities.

Emblematic of this
mindset is that of America’s oldest (founded in 1909) and largest
(500,000 members) civil-rights group, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), whose mission is “to ensure the political, educational,
social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to
eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”

During the Jim Crow era of
segregation, the NAACP helped lead numerous crusades aimed at
achieving racial justice for black Americans. The organization's
officers and rank-and-file members alike courageously took many
public stands that exposed them to both ridicule and peril. During
the World War II era, membership in the group increased tenfold. In
1954, after years of fighting segregation in public schools, the
NAACP won the landmark Brown
v. Board of EducationSupreme Court
case. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the organization played a
prominent role in the massive wave of civil-rights demonstrations
that finally brought segregation to an end throughout the United
States.

During the same period, however, the NAACP
increasingly became an organ of the far left. Today the NAACP blames
"institutional" white racism for virtually every problem
African Americans face. The remedies it proposes for fixing those
problems invariably call for greater government intervention and more
taxpayer-funded social-welfare programs, rather than calls for black
self-help. Consequently, the organization supports racial preferences
rather than equal rights in the realms of employment and education.
Indeed it began moving in that direction in the early 1960s, just a
few years after having advocated color-blind justice in the Brown
case.

Another leading civil-rights organization today
is the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which
seeks to "promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in
America," aims to protect Muslims from hate crimes and
discrimination, and is described by its director of communications,
Ibrahim
Hooper, as being "similar to a Muslim
NAACP."
There is a degree of accuracy to Hooper's claim, in light of the fact
that much as the NAACP views America as a racist nation, CAIR laments
the allegedly ubiquitous "Islamophobia"
of the American people.

Notwithstanding the lofty values and
goals CAIR professes to embrace, the organization has had numerous,
well-documented ties to Islamic terrorism and extremism. A number of
its leading officials have been convicted of such transgressions as
funding and promoting the genocidal agendas of Hamas
and Hezbollah;
taking money from the Holy
Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a
pseudo-charity that was later shut down by the U.S. government
because of its ties to Hamas; conspiring in an Islamic
Group plot to blow up numerous New York City
monuments; illegally shipping merchandise to designated state
sponsors of terrorism; and training with an al Qaeda-allied terrorist
group in Kashmir.

In the summer of 2007, it was learned
that CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic
Association for Palestine, had been named
in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the
Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who
shared the common goal of conducting "a kind of grand Jihad in
eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from
within."

Also prominent among modern-day civil-rights groups is the
National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the
largest
Hispanic advocacy organization in the
United States. NCLR works “to
improve
opportunities for Hispanic Americans,” who are, in its estimation,
an oppressed minority that suffers greatly from injustice and
discrimination in American society. Toward that end, NCLR
favors amnesty for Hispanic illegals already residing in the
U.S., and open borders henceforth -- on the theory that any
restriction on the free movement of immigrants constitutes
a violation of their civil rights, and that any reduction in
government assistance to illegal border-crossers represents “a
disgrace to American values.”

In
addition, NCLR supports access to driver’s
licenses for illegal immigrants; opposes the
REAL
ID Act, which requires that all driver’s
license and photo ID applicants be able to verify that they are legal
residents of the United States; opposes measures that would empower
state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; lobbies
for racial and ethnic preferences (affirmative
action) and set-asides in hiring, promotions,
and college admissions; and supports voting rights for illegal
aliens.

These are just a few of the major civil-rights groups
profiled in this section of Discover The Networks.

The RESOURCES column on the right side of this page contains a link to the section where profiles of civil rights groups can be found. It also contains a link to a section featuring resources that explore, in depth, various issues related to civil rights.